The New Movie Trailer Trend: Percussion Sound Effects

You know Stomp: The long-running theatrical show where performers make music out of everyday objects like garbage cans, brooms, and matchsticks. More and more, movie trailers — particularly for action films and big blockbusters — resemble movie adaptations of Stomp, with the actors and their props (most often guns, but also knives, cars, bombs, and a variety of other stuff) providing percussive sound effects in perfect rhythm with the soundtrack.

This trend really started to take off last year with trailers for films like John Wick: Chapter 2 and Atomic Blonde. Baby Driver not only had percussive sound effects in its trailer, it had them in the film itself. A few months later, it’s practically obligatory for any Hollywood trailer with people punching each other for those punches to be synced up to music. If things keep trending this way, percussive sound effects will quickly supplant sad covers of pop songs as the top movie trailer trick. Here are 15 recent examples.